Kidlit Writer in Progress & Resource Blogger

Please read or watch a read aloud on youtube of “Kitten and the Night Watchman” as some of this article will make more sense.

The webinar started with a discussion of what Sylvie looks for as an editor when reading manuscripts. She considers pacing with plot. Does it have a beginning, climax, end, etc.? She looks at the length of picture books, which are getting shorter as that is the trend, so nothing too wordy. Format is taken into account, meaning are you thinking about your book in terms of it being 32 pages, and did you try out a picture book dummy? She also looks at design, white space, page turns, character, and the heart of it all. She touches on writing quality, using dialogue and descriptive words, and stressing revision. You ultimately want to submit the best manuscript you can.

Someone asked if the story is good but the writing needs work; would it still be taken on? This led to the next part, where an unedited manuscript was read aloud. She asked what we thought was good about it and what still needed work.

Some good things were the immediate onomatopoeia language, how gentle the watchman was with the kitten, and how he was also gentle with the moth. She mentions how she didn’t understand the moth scene, but after she and the author discussed it, it really served as a reminder the reader just how gentle he is. I really liked this too because as he releases the moth outside, it was the perfect reason for him to even be out there to find the lost kitten and give the reader a sense of relief.

When it came to what still needed work, some things mentioned were that it was too wordy and that it took too long to understand where the plot began. She showed us the process she went through with the MS and how she took a picture book dummy and made the words go from about 700 to 300. It was also mentioned the title was The Night Watchman, which is not kid-friendly, so it became Kitten and The Night Watchman.

She explained how she hired an artist who is also a cat lover and worked with an art director and how even the illustrations needed work to provide more emotion and telling of the story

My two favorite things about this book are, first, the descriptive language when the watchman makes his rounds. It’s not boring in the sense that he is making rounds and only sees an excavator, but an excavator that bows like a strange giraffe.

My second favorite thing is how descriptive the surroundings were in the beginning because once the kitten goes missing, the surroundings become a little scary, such as the freight train and the sound coming from it and the dog barking, which is presumably frightening for a kitten. I’m pretty sure this was intentional because the original manuscript shared had the line “There are so many dangers out there for a kitten.” With just the Night Watchman looking outside and hearing how scary it was, it definitely made me, as the reader, feel it was scary and the stakes were high, and I hoped the kitten would be found safe and unharmed.